It took Jadon a short moment to readjust to the angle he viewed everything at. He wasn’t sure how long his enlarged arms would stay as big as they were, but he couldn’t help but revel in looking down on simple things like the dusty mantelpiece, or the doorknob he was about to try and turn.

What was difficult about using huge arms to walk on was balancing on one of them whilst the other attempted to turn something designed for normal sized hands. Jadon’s disproportionate body teetered over his right arm, planted in the ground as the balancing act began, the other hand fumbling with the doorknob. Multiple scrambling attempts later, he managed to squeeze the doorknob between his thumb and forefinger, straining to keep the other fingers from pushing against the door in such a way that he would lose grip again.

He turned the glossy round handle and pulled gently, unsure of how strong his arms were and not wanting to alert anybody to his escape attempt.

The door did not open. The handle was definitely turned but the door stayed shut.

Oh, I’m an idiot, Jadon thought, no wonder it won’t open. What kind of thief forgets the concept of a locked door?

Resigned to the fact that if he could barely use a normal door handle, there was no chance he would be able to use lock picking tools, Jadon leaned back, allowing his large arms to walk him backwards, out of his awkward balanced position. He then charged at the door, shoulder barging it with a right shoulder as big as his torso.

The door was made of a heavy, dense wood. It was thick and Jadon’s shoulder, whilst large, was still made of skin and bone. The door held, although there was an audible cracking sound as it gave ever so slightly under the sheer mass of Jadon’s arm.

Well, anyone near the room will know I’m trying to break out now, Jadon thought, swinging his left arm like a great hammer, the fist slamming at the base of the door. Once. Twice. The third time enough of the door caved away from the blows that Jadon was able to push his hand through and get a good grip of the door, tearing backwards and ripping the door off of its hinges. Whilst the door itself was a solid piece of wood, the hinges were evidently old enough to give way to the right sort of pressure, with the right leverage.

Standing right behind the door, barely three arm strides for Jadon, was Sragos.

“Whilst I had expected some kind of plan from you,” Sragos said, chuckling as he inspected the bulging arms from a distance, “this is not what I had in mind at all.”

“Where is my friend?” Jadon asked, “I’ve essentially got superpowers, just let me and her go and I won’t mess up your master’s fancy house, or that fancy suit.”

“Charming threat,” Sragos said, popping his neck as he stretched it out to the side, “unfortunately threats have to be threatening to be taken seriously and my guess is that your impressive features- and yes, they’re impressive -are new and that makes you as useful as a large baby when it comes to a fight.”

“How about you come a little closer so we can confirm that a child could kick your ass?”

“Well, I hadn’t intended on hurting you at all,” Sragos said, pulling a small dagger out of the pocket he had thrown the metal filings from during their chase. That feels so long ago but it couldn’t have been much more than a couple of weeks, Jadon thought, the sight of the man dipping his hand in his pocket sparking the memory.

Jadon cracked his knuckles against the marble floor, resting his arms back down on top of fists. Less balance, but better prepared to swing out quickly.

“Is this really what you want?” Sragos continued, “seeing the form your ruptured state has taken, I have a working hypothesis. Would you like to be able to hear it before or after I embarrass you?”

“Embarrass me? We’re alone.”

Jadon appeared to be right with this statement. The living room door that he had torn down led into an open room with a large staircase leading up the opposite wall, in a perpendicular direction to the direction he was facing. There were steps that led down, immediately to his right, leading into the darkness. Other doorways dotted the open area, with two large double doors at the base of the stairs, far off in front of Jadon and to his left, appeared to be the entrance to the building. The decoration was just as depressing as in the living room, as if any attempt at color had been bled from the wallpaper, the marble floor, the sparse number of sconces and their white flames. The curtains were black, as was the carpet lining the steps up the staircase. Any overhanging part of ceiling was covered in similar stalactites to the living room. For all the decoration, there was almost no color, and nobody but Jadon and Sragos anywhere in sight.

“Oh, not for long,” Sragos said, looking upwards, “the household staff are insufferably nosy. So, would you like to hear it?”

“Shut up. If I allow it, I’ll let you speak after a beat you to a pulp.”

“So be it.”

The man stepped forward, spinning back out to avoid the immediate flailing punch by Jadon. Jadon wobbled on his stable arm, trying to swipe back with the arm that had just jabbed out, feeling pain as Sragos’ small dagger pierced his skin. Sragos ducked under the arm swinging at him, cutting away as he did. He wasn’t going for large, damaging stabs. Instead, he worked efficiently and with precision, cutting and stabbing where necessary.

“You may have had a chance,” Sragos said, as he plunged his knife in once more, “had you not been crippled. You really were an impressive individual. Worthy of my respect.”

“Shut. Up.” Jadon slapped downwards, but Sragos just vaulted over the arm, slashing down and spinning around to cut at the arm Jadon was balancing upon.

“I’m embarrassed for you. To see you this way, a lumbering ogre of a person. Perhaps you had ogre blood in your family? Perhaps giant?” Two more slices and Jadon cried out in pain and frustration, swapping to balance on his other arm in an attempt to punch out with the one that had been cut less. However, as Jadon put weight on the arm, all the tiny cuts came into effect and he could not even hold his own weight up. Jadon collapsed on the floor, the fight over barely as quickly as it had begun. He lay there, one arm bleeding from countless cuts, useless.

“Or perhaps,” Sragos said, stepping over Jadon’s left arm, wiping the blood off his dagger and onto Jadon’s pained limb, “these changes are only temporary. Perhaps there are more changes that could be made. Perhaps, you share a little common factor with our mutual acquaintance, the old chyringa.”

“Old?”

“Usually a turn of phrase,” Sragos said offhandedly, “but this one is unusually old. Strange.”

“Well,” a scratchy voice came from behind Sragos, out of Jadon’s field of view, “they were meant to be extinct on Rinterria for quite some time. Either there are more, or our guest is extremely old indeed.” Jadon tried to look around Sragos but could not get a good look at whoever was talking. She sounded as if she was trying to talk after walking through a desert and swallowing half of the sand on her way.

“Don’t worry about her,” Sragos said, stepping closer to Jadon, “if I’m right, you have quite a bit more to worry about after this little display.”

Jadon watched it coming, yet still the crack of Sragos’ dagger felt like it rattled his brain inside his skull as his vision darkened and whoever was talking to Sragos stepped into view. Jadon was unable to catch a proper look before he fell unconscious once again.

Iarkspur couldn’t believe her luck. Before the two big bird people had turned their attention to her to pass the time, she had worked out that the wrist restraints keeping her arms down by her sides were looped over her sleeves. Her multiple layers of sleeves due to how cold High Morr and Vernox were.

She had stopped looking over to the chyringa after the bird’s hollering and jeering convinced her to look over out of morbid curiosity and nearly vomit at what she saw. They were attempting to dissect the chyringa, portioning off parts of the skin to inspect how chyringas change their form.

That was the last time she looked over in their direction, but her averted gaze drew the attention of the birds after a while. They scuttled over, dragging a rickety metal trolley, stacked with a few items they had plucked from the tool wall.

“Now, hag child,” Phaenyre said, “why don’t we discover what those creepy women found so interesting about you?”

“Go right ahead and discover a soul, you beaked bogtwig,” Iarkspur said, spitting up at the lady.

“Good,” Virrlo said, “it’s more fun when we get to break them first.”

“I agree,” Phaenyre said, “should we start from the bottom or the top?”

“Definitely the-”

An almighty crashing sound reverberated from upstairs, sifting a small amount of dust from the ceiling. The two sadists looked at each other and rushed for the door, clattering up the stairs, their claws clacking against the stone.

Iarkspur could hear sounds of fighting going on from the doorway. It can’t be Jadon though, she thought, he can’t walk and doesn’t have his wheelchair.

A spluttering and pained cough snapped her back to the room. The chyringa.

“The scalpel,” it said roughly. “Use the scalpel before they return.”

Iarkspur looked down at the table she was tied to. In their haste to leave, either Virrlo or Phaenyre had dropped a small metal bladed tool, the scalpel, close to her hand. Not on their trolley like the rest of the tools.

She strained her finger to inch the scalpel over so that she could properly pick it up, pinching at it until it was levered off the surface of the table enough to grasp properly. She then got to work on her restraints, slicing away, nick by nick until the one restraining the hand with the scalpel was weak enough to snap off. She undid her other hand and then both ankles.

“Thank the gods they didn’t use metal for the clamps, right?” Iarkspur said as she walked over to the chyringa with a larger blade that she had picked up from the trolley.

“Shut it,” the chyringa said, “do you want them to return?”

“You’re going to have to be nicer to me if you want to be let out,” Iarkspur said, pausing a couple steps from the wounded creature.

“Fine. I apologize.” Saying sorry appeared to pain the chyringa even more than the numerous wounds all over its body. Those wounds, however, were already healing up. “Please, stop gawking and get to freeing me. You’ll need my help to take out both the Chizuhz.”

“Will I? What makes you think I don’t have a couple seeds ready to go?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the chyringa said as Iarkspur began cutting away as carefully as she could considering the time frame, “this room is suppressing magic. I have-”

“You have what?” Iarkspur asked, looking up.

“Never mind,” the chyringa said, “irrelevant. Look where you’re cutting.” The sharp snap came as Iarkspur almost continued slicing away, right into chyringa bone.

“What’s your name anyway? What do I call you, now that we’re allies?”

“We aren’t allies. We need each other to survive and then we leave. Simple.”

“You need friends, you know,” Iarkspur said, “they really help someone get over all their pent-up emotions and you seem like you’re ready to explode with angst.”

“I don’t need you pretending to care, either.” The final restraint was cut free and the chyringa set about plucking the glass tubes from its limbs.

“That looks painful.”

“Oh, does it? Does it really? Watch the door in case-”

“Look here, Virrlo,” Phaenyre said from the open doorway, something large lying on the floor behind her. “The toys are trying to leave the toy box.”